Remembering Jewish Europe; Warsaw: From Tradition to Modernity; WNYC

The following program was produced for WNYC New York, with funds provided by the Weiler Arno family. National Public Radio's distribution of this program is made possible with funds provided by the Pew Memorial Trust and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. In the years before World War II, the Jewish community in Poland was thriving and alive. When in no other European country had so many Jews lived for so long a time, they'd come to Poland in the 12th century to help build Polish commerce and cities and had remained to fight in the struggle for her independence. Yet, even in the 1920s and the 30s, in the eyes of many Poles, the Jew was still a fauna, a strange, un-Christian outcast. In the Jews were a separate people. Throughout the centuries, they kept their own language and customs, their own schools, even their own communal self-government, and urban people.

They had migrated at the turn of the century from the rural town, the stettled to the modern city. By the time the First World War had ended, the Polish capital of Warsaw had become a Jewish capital as well. Let's kiss Klamadzka, Zamanov, these streets in the old section bussled with Jewish life. I was born in 1919 in Warsaw, and I lived in the old section of the city. It was a beautiful city, it was not much smaller than Brooklyn. That was a lively city, and the Jews felt there like they felt at home. At the 8th, we had Jewish life, Jewish organizations. And on Friday night, the main entertainment was just to walk on Zamanov or Nalefki, which was all those Jewish streets.

This was the place where people would meet. They would go in in different calyarnas, in Polish, it's called calyarnia, it's a cafe. Boys met girls there, and some even got married by meeting in Doskafei houses. Most people knew each other, but so I was like family, the children played, the neighbors children. We discussed many political events and things with neighbors. If one had a radio by those days, radio was very luxury. So if my father could afford to buy a radio, he had like an open house for every neighbor from the neighborhood to come and listen, to have discussions. The moment you read the Jewish section, the overcrowding was tremendous. As if you came to a different city or a different world. It was not a ghetto, it was not a ghetto, and that says that we understand it. Jewish people like to live with Jewish people.

Of course, we mingled mostly between Jews, Jews, Jews, because we didn't mix, because they didn't accept us. Not because they didn't like them, they didn't like us, they didn't accept us. I felt the pressure. I felt the Jewish misery, I saw in the streets. I saw some beggars, people who were running, crashing, it was a very hectic place. It was always commotion, it was a crowded area, people running back and forth, running to make a living, running to say a prayer, running to meet a friend. Also was the city of the Jewish merchants, there were the streets for shoemakers, there was the street for tailors, there was a street to their bakers. We had three friends, that they used to go from court, yeah, to court, yeah, and he was very beautiful, concerts, and people used to draw them a few pennies from the windows.

That's just the livelihood they made a living like this, yeah, boy, being joyed to be against them. I remember my father used to wear a very beautiful form, had they called it a strum, and they silk coat, and it seemed very beautiful, with the mirrors, they called it the ritual sounds.

It was very festive, it was very beautiful. The Friday night meal was mostly when we came home from shul, the mother would be dressed in a white shawl, the candles were burning, there were two halos at the table, and the father would start to sink shalom, laichem. We all said that the dinner table and my mother saw it sabat meal, which was usually chicken soup, and he had chicken soup and meat and sabat potatoes, European meal, the chicken was a luxury, so we had once a week for sabat. The sabat was the cornerstone of Jewish tradition, and tradition was the cornerstone of Jewish life, and the joy of Friday night meal, the sabat they have rest helped the Jews to transcend the tourists, the misfortunes of every day life.

Among all Jews, the Hasidim were the most traditional, they also were the most visible, the long coats and their small round hats and their sidewalks and beds, they were mockingly cast as the typical Jews, but they were not. Although the Hasidim were significant in number, the Jews were a diverse people. Many found Orthodoxy too restrictive, and for young people whose views were broadened by city living and a Polish education, the sacred way of life had great competition, tradition was one thing, and religion quite another. My father was naturally kosher, he observed every Jewish holiday in the traditional manner, he loved to sing to pray, he wasn't religious by an Orthodox manner, this is how Jews lived, so he lived like a Jew. Now my parents were very religious, my father was Orthodox, and my father wanted all of us, all the children raised us in a very religious way, I had nothing against religious

way, but as a young guy, I liked sports, I liked to go out in the field and play, in a Saturday when I went to shul, and when my father would notice me, I would sneak out and I would go out and play bowl a little bit. When a neighbor would tell my father about it, it would come out in the field, and remember how to hear, and it would bring me by the hear back his shul, I didn't defy religion as such, but I felt that I should be a little freer than my parents were. There was Warsaw Synagogue, the Great Synagogue, which had one of the greatest cantors in the golden age of cantorial music, his name was Gershin Serra, and he was sorry now, he had a fabulous voice, better than Caruso. His range was higher than Caruso, but he had a tremendous color atura, whose voice rolled like a cascade of what was magnificent.

I still remember it, I was a little boy on ice, my father used to love it, used to drag me the synagogue, and we enjoyed it, and each time we used to go out on a Saturday, and particularly on holidays, there were thousands of people in front of it, milling, trying to break in to get in. It's something like you see today only in rock concert with young people when they get right, but there it was for prayers, but why were they all religious now, liturgy was part of the folk culture, and Serra became a folk hero like Caruso Monetalia's. So I wrote his voice, touched religious and secular Jews alike, but in the years between the wars, Warsaw became the seat of secular culture.

The Jewish stage was never dark, it was six or seven plays appear than the Jewish section each day, offering everything from melodrama to Ibsen and Shor, Yiddish, and Hebrew letters flourished, and the serialized novels of Iel, Peritz, Sholomash, and Ivy Singer lit up the pages of an incredibly vibrant and abundant Jewish press. There were an olive pole on 17 Jewish daily newspapers. Then the publisher was about a dozen or more publishing houses that published regularly books every day appeared a Yiddish book every day. Yiddish literature was a really socialist thing that I would say, but it was a special ism, a socialism also with traditional values very strongly imbued. But it was a literature that was describing the life of the poor masses.

It was a literature that was stressing injustices. I remember Ida Kaminska, I saw Warsaw when I was a child. I remember Leo Lipkott, a Jewish actor from the Jewish stage, mostly all a place by my Jewish life. I was, I was suffering several children becoming orphans, and I saw the dip book in Warsaw. I didn't miss one show. When we went to see the dip book in the Habimah performance was something unbelievable about the impression that made. You have to understand that that was in the pure expressionist style of the period. The decorations were made by Shagal, the music by Yulengil, all geniuses. And the performance just was a tremendous thing.

My father loved music, and he was taking us every Friday after the fish, and the butter king that my mother baked every Friday. We were going to the film, harmonic, and listening really to even Arto Rubinstein, and my father loved opera. He was singing himself. He was singing Yiddish folk songs, Margarit Kiss, that was the favorite song of my father. Not every Jew embraced Jewish culture.

Some felt such distinctiveness a handicap in the Polish world. If only their Jewishness could be eliminated, wouldn't they then be Polish? Calling themselves Palsies assimilated Jews gave up their religion, their language, often their family name, but it was clear that they had gained little. With the worldwide depression of the 20s and 30s and the wave of fascism that surged to Europe, the Jew came under increasing attack. Outrageous rumors of Jewish wealth and bidded hard press polls who found it increasingly difficult to make ends meet. To these polls, a Jew was a Jew, a simulated Jew was just a Jew in disguise. I lived in two worlds. I put on a mask when I ended the school in the morning. I took off the mask when I re-entered my home, at home I spoke Yiddish. On the outside I spoke a Christian Polish. I knew how to behave.

I was also extremely cautious not to touch on anything connected with religion. We had priests who would visit the school and every classroom was a very large cross. There was an awareness that you are in a different world. What is most striking is that the Jews that became my friends in Warsaw were completely assimilated to such a degree that they hated the Jews. They themselves became Jew haters and they took on Polish names. They were very critical of Jewish names. For instance, if you said in Warsaw, or my friend Rebecca, everybody looked around, you know, because Rebecca, this beautiful biblical name, had a connotation that was despised in Poland. Rebecca was a Jew. And whatever is Jewish is inferior, whatever is Jewish is bad, whatever is Jewish should

be criticized. The legal status of the Jews didn't change, but more and more they felt the weight of their oppression. Jews were barred from employment in municipal and state offices and their schools were denied financial aid, Polish universities adopted strict quotas for Jewish applicants, often scheduling entrance exams on the Sabbath. The Jewish unemployment rate soared far higher than that of the poll. By the late 30s, even the government sanctioned a boycott of Jewish businesses. Only violence was discouraged, at least officially. One felt, especially in a few years before the war, that something is brewing, that the Polish youth is very anti-Semitic, that they were told that they are misery and anything that goes wronged is due to Jewish influence because Jews overpowered the press, Jews overpowered the economy, and Jews are everywhere.

Therefore, I looked at the polls around me without great admiration. I knew their history, I knew that they had been subjugated and they had a basic bitterness in them. And all this was directed against a scapegoat, in this case, Jews. It was publicly announced that you can boycott the Jew, but you cannot harm him. That the fact that they used the war to boycott men's violence. We avoided going to the Polish sect, even the parks we avoided. There was a park, sassy ogret, they called it, and we couldn't go to that park, because if we would go to that park, that would be the same. Now Jewish political life began to boil in response.

The younger secular Jews took the lead. They saw a Jewish problem that called for a Jewish answer. They broke from the orthodox politics of appeasement and turned with unbelievable energy to international ideas and hopes, communism, socialism, immigration to Palestine in America. The sons and daughters of orthodox parents were now idealists and revolutionaries. They started believing in different dreams, a different dream meant to better their life. One dream was Zionism, second dream was socialism. The youth was always busy, very active. There wasn't like hanging around the front of a candlestar. Even then, if you found the group of Jews, young people, they would be discussing and hammering way on political issues.

The idea was you had to belong somewhere, the idea was you shouldn't live just for a career, a careerist will look down upon first of all. Just a career to make money that's the lowest of the law. You have to belong to strive for something, to try to achieve something, to be somebody, do something with your life. And above all, you had to study, self-study was coming to all the movements. There was a group of Jews, like, see them in orthodox and fanatics, who felt that fighting for things doesn't help. We have to believe that God will send all the cure for all the ailments that we have. But we didn't believe in that, we believe that we have to fight to get what we want. And fight by organizing, by letting the government know that we are not passive about it,

that we don't like what we get, and we want more, we want better things. There was a big family, they were at maybe eight children, and when we used to get together and they were living in Rome. One was a communist, one was a Zionist, the father was an orthodox Jew, you see. And they were discussions, debates. It was important to convince each other of the righteousness of that or the other point. It was always a fight, it started theoretically, and it ended always physically, because everybody believed with all their heart that they are right. For instance, a wooden person would believe that if we all become international, everything would be healed, everything would be perfect.

But a Zionist person would feel that if we go to Israel, Israel is the answer to all our troubles, where our communists believed that a Russia is a heaven. The argument strayed from the street corners to the Cahillah, the age-old communal council of the Jews, once primarily concerned with religious matters, the Cahillah had come more and more to oversee the social welfare of Jewish Warsaw. Its members were elected and represented the full array of Jewish political parties from the religious, a good Israel to the underground communist. As the Jewish situation deteriorated, the Cahillah became an ideological battlefield. By the late thirties, the Jewish labor boomed and the various factions of the Zionist party were in bitter competition, both were more than political parties. They were networks of social and educational organizations. The boen was profoundly socialistic. They fought for the rights of Jewish workers and were determined to liberate the Jew on Polish soil.

This on the other hand believed that the Jewish problem could be solved only by immigration. They would pioneer a sovereign homeland in Palestine. I always watched with fascination some types of the people were organizing the movement called Hashemer, the young guard, but that movement and the impact of developments in Poland those days, it began changing very rapidly from a scout nature type of organization into a definitely orientation for pioneering in Israel, labour Zionism, kibbutz. When the idea really developed in a very personal manner, we established the community of brothers, but the idea is how to perpetuate it beyond the biological age of other lessons. And the idea was, it's only possible, nakibbutz in Palestine.

There was a time when we had discussions why we could not be a part of all the social movement, but both leader realized that other problems are not like everybody in the working class. The Jewish working class did not have any access to any offices where they paid a little bit more. So they had typical Jewish problem because they were discriminated against. They didn't want to run away, we didn't want to seek something better, some other place. We wanted what belonged to us, where we were, where we toyed, and where we brought our talents and our skills. Design is predicted already far ahead of time that there is unavoidable at hit level to come, it will destroy the Jewish community in Poland, and they advocated emigration.

But to the very end, the Bund continued to strive for remaining in Poland and for fighting for the rights of the Jews in Poland. Poland was not something strange to them, it was their country. And don't fight for the Jewish as well as the Polish Poland that they loved. And they all loved Poland, it was the beautiful country, and we had very fruitful years there. So only with the regret that we were disappointed in our gentle neighbors that they did not live up to our expectations. Those assemble a rise and stand to reach the arrival of the German Fühwa. My dear friend and leader, who might have ate local long-food time and meet me, make your a dummy, fight at the vessel.

No one should confuse my patients with cowardice. I therefore resolved to speak to Poland in the same language in which Poland has addressed us for such a long time. He, he, he ciled to the fühwa. On October 1, 1939, one month after the invasion of Poland. Hitler's troops marched into Warsaw. Within a year, the Jewish section of the city was surrounded by a war, and Warsaw was a concentration camp. In July of 42, 300,000 Polish Jews were deported from Warsaw to the Treblinka death camp. In April, when the Nazis returned to finish their work, they were met with armed resistance.

Jewish men, women and children refused to be slaughtered, hungry and virtually weaponless. They held off German tanks and anti-aircraft gunners for nearly one month. But how could they prevail? The mid-May, the ghetto fell, the great synagogue burned to ashes. After the war, Poland regained their independence, but the war against the Jews continued. The new Polish government was intent on finishing what Hitler had begun. Finally, a Poland free of Jews was within reach, and he is following the war. The remnant of Polish Jewry was encouraged to leave their homeland for history.

By 1957, over half of them did. Of the three and a half million Jews who lived in pre-war Poland, only five to seven thousand remain. There are no bustling Jewish streets in Warsaw today, and all physical evidence of that thriving culture has been erased. What remains of Poland's Jewish past is found only in the tearful, but proud memories of those who survived, and in the hopes, in the dreams of their children. The voices in this program were Rükol, Alexandrovich, Lübergerus, Jacob Lofmann, Rose Minsky, Samuel Schneiderman, Alina Schneiderman, Bernard Vess, and Maras Visograd, Warsaw from tradition to modernity was written in produce by Newt Borker.

The program was mixed by David Rükken, tape editor Karen Perlman, program consultants for Dr. Lüthien, Döbershitsky, and Henry Zebasnik, remembering Jewish Europe, was created and developed by Beth Friend, an executive producer of this series, is Barbara Serrota. Special thanks also to the evil Institute for Jewish Research, the Brooklyn Center for Holocaust Studies, and Kelly, and Yeschül, casting, my name is Rod Stuyck. This program was produced for WNYC New York with funds provided by the Weiler Arno family, and was distributed by National Public Radio, with funds provided by the Pew Memorial Trust and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

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